Dream Tropes Wiki/Off Model
Animation is expensive. Really expensive. An average 22-minute episode of an anime costs around $123,000, and American shows tend to be double that. When a production company decides that the important episodes (i.e. pilots, whams, and finales) of a show get priority, other episodes (like filler) will, to conserve production costs, be drawn with only the bare minimum of framework that they absolutely must have. In American cartoons of the '80s and early '90s (and mid-'70s, to some extent), it became the norm to send animation overseas to studios in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Australia and other countries to cut costs even further. The budget problems were thus exacerbated by language and cultural barriers, which resulted in nearly every cartoon of the era having animation errors of varying degrees. Japanese studios came to be seen by American studios as the "top of the line" of overseas studios because of their consistent aversion of this trope.note Long running shows suffering from budget issues or a troubled production schedule will start resorting to thinly veiled camera tricks. The movement and even design of characters will start to slip, especially if the show is bothering to animate heavy action scenes. When they are animated, fight scenes will become Fight Unscenes. The prevalence of computer-inked animation in recent years merely assures that colors stay consistent. Off model refers to the character model (on a model sheet), which is what the animators are supposed to base their drawings on. Another important step is animation checking, which may be skimped on when time or money (or even both) is short. Fans are typically not pleased, and it is very common for companies to announce they're fixing up things for the inevitable DVD release. Some artists willingly invoke this trope and do not follow model sheets, such as Ren and Stimpy's John Kricfalusi. Following models too closely can lead to rigid and lifeless animation, whereas playing fast and loose with the designs can allow for better expression of emotion. This does not mean that such creators "draw badly", they still follow the basic rules of animation, and work to avoid animation errors. See also Uncanny Valley, the result when it gets too far out of hand, and Special Effect Failure, which is a similar trope, but for live action and animation. Contrast Animation Bump, wherein the animation suddenly becomes much better than usual and Body Horror where an appearance similar to being off model is done intentionally and for horror. For animation studios who are notorious for this, see AKOM, Toei Animation, GONZO, Studio Shaft, Sunrise, Studio DEEN, Actas, Wang Film Productions and Diomedea. For a studio whose supporters and critics often argue about whether their animation is this, see Kennedy Cartoons. Advertising * The ETVKK/Saturday Banushen joint-promos from the early 2000's that featured original animation: ** The original 2002-2003 version of the "singing promo". Not only does it make it look like the early 2000's version of Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue, the animation studio (Colorland Animation Productions Ltd.) manages to screw up , , , ... with only , , , and Akari Kagamine barely escaping. Western Animation * Mole Miner suffered from this a lot. The series was storyboarded, written, and largely produced in the States with voice recording and some of the writing done in Canada, but the episodes were shipped off to be animated in South Korea, Japan, China, Indonesia, and Italy. While the Japanese episodes (done by , , and ) are decent and the South Korean episodes (done by and ) will have the occasional slip-up, the Indonesian episodes (done by Palembang Animation Production) are infamous for their massive amounts of mistakes and the Chinese episodes (done by and ) seem to be on-and-off with being full of mistakes or just kinda okay, but the Italian episodes (done by Meraviglie)... good lord. "Coal, Wonderful Coal" came back to the States with so many animation errors (according to an interview with Alexander P. Mawr of the Xavier Eggers writing team) that large portions had to be redone by Hanho Heung-Up and Bee Train (all three studios receive the "Animation Production" credit, though only Meraviglie's Vedat Spahija and Enzo Aglio are credited). Category:Tropes Category:Dream Fiction Wiki